This legislative is not only the supreme power of the
common-wealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the
community have once placed it; nor can any edict of any body
else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power soever
backed, have the force and obligation of a law, which has not its
sanction from that legislative which the public has chosen and
appointed: for without this the law could not have that, which is
absolutely necessary to its being a law, * the consent of the
society, over whom no body can have a power to make laws, but by
their own consent, and by authority received from them; and
therefore all the obedience, which by the most solemn ties any
one can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this supreme
power, and is directed by those laws which it enacts: nor can any
oaths to any foreign power whatsoever, or any domestic
subordinate power, discharge any member of the society from his
obedience to the legislative, acting pursuant to their trust; nor
oblige him to any obedience contrary to the laws so enacted, or
farther than they do allow; it being ridiculous to imagine one
can be tied ultimately to obey any power in the society, which is
not the supreme.
(*The lawful power of making laws to command whole politic
societies of men, belonging so properly unto the same intire
societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever
upon earth, to exercise the same of himself, and not by express
commission immediately and personally received from God, or else
by authority derived at the first from their consent, upon whose
persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny.
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